Abstract

This paper presents near-IR photometry of a selected sample of southern hemisphere E + A galaxies. The sample includes 50 galaxies from nearby (z similar to 0.05) and distant (z similar to 0.3) clusters, as well as E + A galaxies from the field (z similar to 0.1). Observations include 13 normal early-type galaxies from the held and from clusters to be compared with the E + A sample. The photometry includes J, H, and K, apparent magnitudes and colors. Observed colors are obtained from the apparent total magnitudes and compared with those of the GISSEL96 spectrophotometric models of galaxy evolution. There is an overall agreement between integrated colors of models and observed ones, for both the E + A galaxies located in clusters and those in the held, at z less than or similar to 0.1. However, large differences between colors predicted from models and those observed in E + A galaxies located in clusters at z similar to 0.3 are found. We also compute rest-frame colors for all the galaxies using two different sets of K-corrections and obtain average colors for all the samples. This work investigates systematic properties of the E + A sample as a function of its environment, Results seem to indicate that cluster E + A galaxies (at low redshift) are bluer than field E + A galaxies at z similar to 0.1. Even this conclusion does not depend on whether we use comoving or rest-frame colors or on the models used to obtain rest-frame colors; the difference is not significant enough, considering color dispersions between the samples. If the differences are real, they could imply a different stellar content for the E + A galaxies located in the held compared with those located in the cluster E + A galaxies.